Wilmington, Du Bois of New Haven, Barbadoes of Boston,
and others, strove singly and together as men, they said, not
as slaves; as "people of color," not as "Negroes." The trend
of the times, however, refused them recognition save in
individual and exceptional cases, considered them as one with
all the despised blacks, and they soon found themselves
striving to keep even the rights they formerly had of voting
and working and moving as freemen. Schemes of migration
and colonization arose among them; but these they refused to
entertain, and they eventually turned to the Abolition movement
as a final refuge.

Here, led by Remond, Nell, Wells-Brown, and Douglass, a
new period of self-assertion and self-development dawned.
To be sure, ultimate freedom and assimilation was the ideal
before the leaders, but the assertion of the manhood rights of
the Negro by himself was the main reliance, and John Brown's
raid was the extreme of its logic. After the war and eman-
cipation, the great form of Frederick Douglass, the greatest of
American Negro leaders, still led the host. Self-assertion,
especially in political lines, was the main programme, and
behind Douglass came Elliot, Bruce, and Langston, and the
Reconstruction politicians, and, less conspicuous but of greater
social significance, Alexander Crummell and Bishop Daniel
Payne.

Then came the Revolution of 1876, the suppression of the
Negro votes, the changing and shifting of ideals, and the
seeking of new lights in the great night. Douglass, in his old
age, still bravely stood for the ideals of his early manhood,